


We Need to Talk About the Sapphire

by catherineflowers



Series: We Need To Talk About ... [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, F/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 17:29:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14623620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: "If she’s honest, if she’s really, truly honest – she doesn’t want to be a Lannister. The thought is a black shadow that hangs over everything. Seeing how deeply, how indelibly, Cersei has hurt Jaime scares Brienne to death. If they’re happy, publicly happy, will it paint a target on both their backs?But Gods, she wants that sapphire. It’s beautiful. It should be sitting on her finger right now. She feels awful that it isn’t. There must be something – some other way?"





	We Need to Talk About the Sapphire

**1\. Brienne**

She watches from the beach as Jaime wanders into the ocean, naked and golden in the last of the evening sunlight. They are miles from anywhere, miles from anyone. Just the crash of waves and the calling of birds.

It’s perfect. It’s idyllic. They’ve done nothing but eat and talk and sleep and fuck for weeks. Winter hasn’t quite reached this part of the world yet, there has been no hint of it save for the merest chill in the air of an evening.

Jaime, she thinks, is starting to recover. He has some more meat on his ribs, his skin is brighter, and he’s sleeping better. He’s laughing more, too – slowly losing that haunted look he’s had ever since she’s known him.

The sex has reached new heights too – they’ve spent endless hours exploring each other’s bodies. She can’t think of an area of Jaime that she hasn’t invested serious time in kissing or licking or sucking since they’ve been here. It’s been magical. Truly magical.

They haven’t, however, mentioned the ring. That beautiful sapphire. It’s here, she knows it is – it’s sitting in his bedside drawer in its box. Expectant, almost. Almost a pressure.

**2\. Jaime**

Waist-deep in the ocean, he stares out at the horizon, loving the feeling of the warm breeze in his hair and beard. He stretches his muscles slowly, loving the tiredness, the soreness, and loving that it’s because he has over-exerted himself fucking Brienne.

Being here has changed so much.

He doesn’t feel back to his old self, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to be that man any more. That Lannister. He’s here to make a new Jaime – Brienne’s Jaime. A man she might consider marrying. He doesn’t quite know what that looks like yet, or even if he has enough strength left to become that man, but he won’t leave here until that sapphire is on her finger.

**3\. Brienne**

He’s so beautiful. Dozing in her arms, eyes half closed, hair falling around his face. They are sitting on their villa’s veranda together, watching the sun set over the ocean. She strokes the line of his cheekbone, down through the gold-and-grey of his beard. She likes the beard, he looks good with it – wild and unfettered. He kisses her fingertips with his kiss-swollen lips and closes his eyes.

**4\. Jaime**

Jaime dreams about Cersei. He dreams about the last time they were together, fucking like dogs in the summer house at the bottom of her garden. The time the little boy caught them and videoed it for his father. The time that changed everything.

He’s seen that video so many times he can’t remember the reality any more. In his dream, it is exactly how it looked at trial. Cersei’s the victim – her gritted teeth are from enduring pain not pleasure, his hands on her hips dig too hard into her flesh and they’re hurting her. He’s pulling her hair because he wants to hurt her.

He wants to hurt her. 

In the video, she was begging him to stop. He’d been shocked by that – he hadn’t remembered her doing that at the time. But surely she was just worried about being caught? Fucking then and there was reckless and public, Robert and his friend were in the house, drinking and lunching. 

Jaime had endured a tedious weekend, listening to old sporting stories, the glory of old business deals, bravado and bullshit. He couldn’t handle it any more, and Cersei looked so beautiful …

He’d waited until she’d headed for the kitchen and dragged her outside, overcoming her protests with kisses, hands in her dress, shoving her onto all fours in the summer house and claiming her roughly, unaware of the little boy, unaware of his phone. Jaime had pulled out and shot his load into Cersei’s pretty golden hair, so he could see the wet patch and smirk to himself all day. It had taken about three minutes. Three minutes that had ended up changing their lives forever.

He’d been cocky and stupid, irritated by her boorish husband and his dour friend who clearly hated him, but she’d been willing. Or had she? In his darkest moments, he wonders if he had raped Cersei that day.

In his dream, there’s no doubt it’s rape. She’s screaming. Shoving his face as he rips at her clothes, turning her over, yanking her dress up to see her pale white buttocks. The screams she is screaming aren’t hers though, they’re his. They aren’t in the summer house any more, they are in the machine shop, in the prison, the smell of sawdust and metal and oil all around.

No, He can’t do this, He doesn’t want to go back here. He can’t.

He can’t stop. Five of him, five shadows with his face, hold Cersei down, arms and legs, muffling her screams with an oily rag as he rapes her. The power. The excitement. The rage. 

It all explodes in a roaring climax, his seed boiling out of him in a torrent of fury.

He pulls out and Cersei curls in a ball on the floor and sobs, just as he had. _She is me_ , he thinks. He knows what happens next.

Suddenly in his hand, the axe. It had been a big one, taken from the tool cage. The shadow Jaimes yank Cersei up from the floor, dirty and confused - sobbing, bleeding, snotty and terrified. They stretch her arm out on the workbench, hold it down. She begs and pleads and screams …

He doesn’t even pause. He brings the axe down on her bright white wrist in a beautiful, glimmering arc. The vibration through the handle as it hits the workbench is one of the most exhilarating things he’s ever felt.

Cersei’s screams are all her own this time, high and shrill and agonised. She falls back to the floor, clutching at her bloody spurting stump, eyes bugged and horrified at the meat, the bone, the blood. 

_She is me._

He doesn’t look at her. He looks at her dismembered hand, twitching, bleeding on the workbench. 

It’s wearing the sapphire engagement ring.

**5\. Brienne**

He wakes suddenly, with an animalistic cry. Fire and death and murder in his eyes. He leaps to his feet, looking around him, not understanding.

He sees Brienne, sees the sunset, almost finished. Remembers where he is.

He sinks back down onto the bench, covering his face with his hand. Shuddering and shivering. Then the sobbing starts. 

Brienne doesn’t say a word. Leads him back into the villa, wraps him in a blanket and just holds him tight on the cushions of the huge corner couch. He clings to her, too, both arms around her back.

“I love her,” he sobs into her neck. “I love her, I do, I do – I love her so much.”

He’s talking about Cersei of course. She knows this. She knows a part of Jaime will always love Cersei, but she understands. It’s a brainwashed love, an instinct and a habit. Being part of Cersei was part of everything he was, everything he did since the moment he was born – he can’t uproot it.

For many years, he told her yesterday, he’d built his life around that love. He’d chosen his job, his social circle, his home and even his hobbies so he could be close to Cersei, so they could have opportunities to be alone. There was nothing about Jaime that wasn’t also Cersei’s – everything he was was her.

He had believed that she’d returned that love, in a star-crossed destiny sort of way. One person in two bodies, he’d told Brienne in a dark and bitter voice. He, apparently, was the other half of Cersei’s soul, and she only felt complete when he was inside her. She’d made sure to time her contraception to ensure that he was the father of their children.

It was sick. It made Brienne feel sick. Revulsed. It didn’t seem much like love to her. But at the core of it all, there was her Jaime. She recognised him in all of that – the intensity, the single-mindedness. The loyalty beyond reason. These were good things that had been applied to a perversion.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. He’s looking into her eyes, more awake now. Wanting desperately for her to know he loves her too. That Cersei’s gone, those feelings are irrelevant now. “You know I love you more. You know I had never known what real love was until I loved you.”

She nods. The sapphire drips from every word he says, but still she isn’t sure. She wants to be with him, and she loves him so much it hurts, but being Mrs Lannister, the wife of Jaime Lannister, seems like something that will hurt them both.

**6\. Jaime**

“I love you, too,” she says. But her eyes change, the way they do every time he’s mentioned the sapphire.

She knows the truth now. That’s the problem. She knows how far this goes, how sick this is, how deep-rooted and corrupt it gets.

After that night in the club, when he’d seen Renly Baratheon in the VIP area, Brienne had gone to work the next evening and been summarily fired. Renly had seen them on the CCTV. Arriving together, parting with a kiss. Jaime waiting at the bar for her, then abruptly leaving. He’d been kind about it, and given her almost a year’s wages, but he’d supped from Cersei’s poison chalice all the same.

It had hurt Brienne. Deeply. If it had been any other time, any other circumstance, he’d have gone down there and knocked Renly out. Unfortunately, his left hook wasn’t anywhere near as good as his right once was, and there was prison to consider.

They didn’t know if Cersei knew, if Robert would come after him for violating the restraining order, so they ran. An indefinite holiday, somewhere warm. Somewhere nothing mattered, so they could focus on the things that did.

They are both too saddle sore to fuck again tonight, so they walk along the beach together, hand in hand. She looks amazing in the moonlight, her hair so pale it’s colourless, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright blue – so alive with life and love. She hasn’t bothered with make-up for some weeks now and the sun has brought her freckles back to life. Her face is ugly, he thinks, but it’s perfect – it perfectly reflects the woman she is inside, honest and without vanity. He loves her face.

They have to walk for an hour before they can even see the lights of the nearest town, far off in the distance. “Let’s go back,” he says. “We’re too close to people.” 

She laughs and they turn back, making the return journey in the surf, their feet repeatedly stroked and soaked by lapping waves. Jaime wraps his arm around her back and puts his head on her shoulder. Brienne leans down to kiss his mouth tenderly. His cock stirs in his jeans at the merest touch of her lips, but his body knows he can’t take any more tonight. He’s not as young as he used to be. Shame he wasted that on Cersei.

**7\. Brienne**

He falls asleep much more quickly than he used to. It only takes an hour of TV, an hour of watching shopping channels and he’s curled up on her belly, snoring softly. She strokes his beard, starting to seriously consider that bright green wolf fleece she’s seen them advertise every night. Once winter comes, it might be handy.

She’s itching for a cigarette – back at home she’d always have a last smoke before she went to bed, but she’s promised him she’ll quit and she’s done so well.

Smoking is a distraction, it keeps her hands and mind busy. Without it, she starts to think about the sapphire. About what it might be like to be Jaime’s wife. Practically, she knows already - it would be like this. Days spent together, peaceful and calming. Helping him with his recovery, him helping her with hers. A lot of sex.

So why does it feel like such a big step? What would it change? 

It’s not the commitment – she already knows she wants to be with him forever. It’s not the ceremony or the public spectacle – they can do it just the two of them at the town hall. Right here. Tomorrow, if she wanted.

If she’s honest, if she’s really, truly honest – she doesn’t want to be a Lannister. The thought is a black shadow that hangs over everything. Seeing how deeply, how indelibly, Cersei has hurt Jaime scares Brienne to death. If they’re happy, publicly happy, will it paint a target on both their backs?

But Gods, she wants that sapphire. It’s beautiful. It should be sitting on her finger right now. She feels awful that it isn’t. There must be something – some other way?

**8\. Jaime**

He makes breakfast. Badly – cooking is pretty tough with one hand, so it’s scrambled eggs again. She comes out of the shower just in time, her face scrubbed and rosy pink, smiling a broad and hungry smile. She devours the eggs in less than a minute, still smiling.

She looks happy and relaxed. He can’t place what’s different, but something is. He holds her hand across the table, his body already yearning for hers.

“Do you want to head down to The Nook?” he asks.

She gives him a naughty smile. The Nook is a little place a way up the coast that they found, a private little cove with some overhanging trees. They have made it their own outdoor bedroom – blankets and pillows and some soft white linen draped in the trees. They’ve made some unbelievably good love there.

After breakfast they dress – him in a pair of beach shorts and her in a loose black cotton sundress. They head off, hand in hand. He’s hard before they’ve even left the villa. 

He pulls off her sundress about half way there, using his teeth to help his good hand with the fastenings. He’s scandalised to realise she’s got nothing on underneath, open-mouthed with lust. She runs off, laughing and naked, beating him to The Nook by a whole minute. It’s not easy to run in a full state of arousal.

When he gets there, she’s reclined on the pillows, legs apart, eyes dark. He kicks his shorts off and she pulls him on top of her, kissing him hungrily. He gathers her broad legs into the crooks of his arms and pushes himself into her in a single smooth thrust, all the way in, deliciously deep. She makes a noise that’s halfway between a grunt and a sigh and her eyes close in delight.

“I’m not going to last,” he warns her through gritted teeth. “Why did you have to be naked under that damn dress?”

She chuckles throatily and wraps her legs around his back, hard. “I don’t care,” she whispers. “Fuck me hard.” 

He pants into her face, trying desperately not to disgrace himself. But she’s so wet … and so tight, and so strong, and she’s urging his thrusts with her hands and with her legs, her eyes bright and sparkling with lust, and he loves her, he loves her …

He hears himself groan and then he’s overcome by absolute ecstasy – how could he say no? Coming inside Brienne is just about the most beautiful thing in the world.

He shouts out, inarticulate, helpless. Scaring several birds in the trees above – they take off and fly away over the sea.

Brienne kisses him softly while he waits for his senses to return. He apologises but she only laughs.

“Not finished yet, are you?”

“Not by a long way,” he grins.

“Good,” she says, and pushes him over so he’s the one on his back on the cushions. Before he has a chance to catch his breath she’s clambers upwards to sit herself on his face. These past few weeks have made Brienne sexually bold. Not that he’s protesting – she tastes absolutely divine. He drinks his seed from her like a starving man, his beard getting drenched as she arches and moans above him.

He watches her from between her thighs, head tipped back, hair bright and gleaming in the sunlight, her nipples thrusting out with every ragged breath she draws. She’s never looked more incredible.

**9\. Brienne**

Brienne feels beautiful. Worshipped. Adored. 

He hums and sighs between her thighs, his hand on her hips, holding her hard against his mouth as he licks and sucks and plays with her sex.

He knows her rhythm, he’s playing her like an instrument, and she’s vibrating, the feeling building and building and building, taking over every nerve, lightning behind her eyes, blood thumping in her ears …

It’s one hell of a climax. She lets go with a roar, clenching his face tight between her legs, not caring if she suffocates him, riding that sweet wave as it peaks and crests and then, piece by piece, gently ebbs away. She slumps, boneless and panting, onto the pillows. The world is very very far away.

She’s aware of him shifting, taking hold of her, kissing her mouth with his slick wet lips, murmuring words of love into her neck.

She’s gone, useless, destroyed. But he’s there.

**10\. Jaime**

They wander out together into the sea, waist deep, to wash themselves and cool off. Arms wrapped around each other, kissing. Kissing again.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says, her lips on his forehead.

“What about?”

“The ring. The sapphire.”

A leap of hope, but a stab of fear as well. He opens his mouth, but doesn’t trust himself to say anything that won’t fuck everything up, so he says nothing.

“I want it,” she says, Direct as always. “The ring, the engagement. The marriage. I want you.”

Because his smart, stupid mouth can’t stop itself, he says “Was it the blow job that swayed it?”

Luckily, she laughs. The bridge of her nose wrinkles cutely. The laugh is a little nervous though. This isn’t going to be as simple as he thought.

“When we marry,” she says, looking him dead in the eye, “I don’t want to be Mrs Lannister.”

“I can live with that.”

“And I don’t want you to be Mr Lannister either. I want you to be Mr Tarth.”

“Oh.” That stops him short. Being a Lannister, Jaime Lannister, has been his whole identity. His whole life.

“I want it to be a clean start. I’ve been thinking about it. It would make us difficult to find, it would make you much more anonymous too. And it would keep us away from them – symbolically and practically.”

He looks into her eyes and sees the truth in her words, the power of them. “Jaime Tarth,” he tries, rolling the name around his mouth. It amuses him. Makes him smile. 

He likes the sound of Jaime Tarth – he sounds like an honest man. Like a happy one.

“Fuck it – why not?” he tells her. Kisses her hard.

She laughs, a huge smile on her face, broad and happy.

“You drive a hard bargain! Do you want your sapphire then, you capricious wench?”

She nods eagerly, and he leads her out of the water and back to their discarded clothes.

“I have a condition of my own,” he tells her. “Once you put it on your finger, it’s the only thing you’re allowed to wear for the rest of the day.”

“Done,” she grins, and takes him by the hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn't leave these guys hanging, they were just so sad at the end of the last one.
> 
> This got a little darker than I had intended it to, but I hope you understand. Jaime's struggling.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who has pushed and encouraged and been interested in this story. You have been so lovely.


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